Page 2 of Dead Serious with Benefits
I said nothing, guessing she was probably using an out-of-place flower to leave the conversation. She and I had a mutual respect, more professional than personal. We didn’t dislike each other, but on a personal level, neither of us had connected. She was too sharp and critical to get to know, but it made her excellent at attention to detail. If you wanted someone to keep a close eye on deliveries, stock, carrying out requests, or any number of the ‘colder’ aspects of running a funeral home, she was the one.
She wasn’t bad at interacting with the grieving, but she wasn’t the best either, since her cool demeanor sometimes put people off and made her seem cold when they needed warmth. It was why she avoided services, letting others deal with people while she crunched the numbers, checked schedules, and followed up on the finer details that kept the business running.
Mitchell sighed and walked up to me, staring down the aisle. “You’d think I’d asked her what color underwear she was wearing. All I asked was if she thought anything interesting would happen at this one.”
For the average person, that question could be received poorly. But I knew Mitchell well enough to know he meant no disrespect, even if it was in poor taste. “Most services are…standard. It’s best not to start looking to see if anyone is going to have another…incident. Those happen once in a blue moon.”
“Chairs were thrown,” he muttered, trying to justify himself without being heard by his greatest critic.
“It’s not the first time a fight has broken out at a service,” I told him calmly, trying to decide if his attitude was because he was still in his early twenties and immature, or if it was just part of who he was. “Nor will it be the last. Though I hope I don’t have to remind you that talking about this sort of thing when there are people here is a horrible idea.”
His eyes widened. “Jesus, you’re starting to sound like her. I wouldnever?—”
I nodded. “I assumed as much, but accidents happen if you’re not cautious.”
He was a good man, still young, but he was by no means a bad person, and not even an unthinking one. In many ways, he was the opposite of Elaine. He was a bright spot for the funeral home, charismatic and excellent with people. I had witnessed him pulling a laugh out of those who were, by all accounts, lost to their grief. Not that he was all jokes and sunshine, he could take his usually upbeat personality and slide it behind a mask of somberness and respect. Still, he had a natural gift for knowing what to say with most people he interacted with.
It made him a perfect fit during services. It was even more obvious when you considered that his attention to detail was…lacking. However, his shortcomings were easy to manage, and it was worth a little extra effort to make sure he was the face people saw when they were here to pay homage to the departed.
“I’m always careful around people when they’re here,” he said thoughtfully. “People don’t need to hear me being a jackass.”
“Your self-awareness doesn’t do you a whole lot of credit,” Elaine piped up as she passed, checking the alignment of thechairs, which was unnecessary. It struck me as odd that she was in the business in the first place.
I knew why Mitchell was here; he had been drifting aimlessly through life until shortly before he began working here, including getting into trouble involving drugs and a car accident. His grandfather had served with Mr. Dalton decades ago and had apparently made a call, hoping to find work for his grandson, who, while good-hearted, got into trouble if he didn’t have something to focus on. Mr. Dalton had given me the details when he’d decided to bring Mitchell on, and while I thought it a strange choice at the time, as a funeral home wasn’t exactly a usual place to ‘straighten’ someone up, I hadn’t questioned it. Which turned out to be a good choice on my part, as Mitchell had clearly proven he could do the work.
Despite his age and immaturity, he had adapted to the work with surprising grace and speed, and none of the discomfort surrounding death and grieving I sensed from Elaine. Any business that dealt directly with death and dying tended to repel most people, but it also attracted some of the strangest groups of people. Some people looked at me and saw a quiet, stoic figure and wondered how I ended up working at a funeral home.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Elaine adjusting the large picture of the deceased in happier times. “Elaine, there’s no point messing with it. People will end up bumping into it and moving it. We’ll be lucky if someone doesn’t accidentally knock it down.”
She gave a little huff that I took as acknowledgement and annoyance. “I know. I can’t help myself. Mitchell, let’s go.”
“I know she’s in charge of stuff, but I didn’t know that stuff included me,” Mitchell grumbled.
“We need your smug face out front in case there are early arrivals,” she said, her shoes digging into the carpet as she strode past us. “Arlo is still preparing; he doesn’t need us underfoot.”
Mitchell glanced at me and blinked. “Oh…right. You’ve got your meditation or whatever to do. Sorry about that.”
“It’s not…” I began, then stopped. “Well, I suppose there are worse things to call it. I’ll join you up front shortly.”
“Sure, yeah, whatever, no rush. I can handle things now if I need to,” he said with a shrug.
Huh. That little blip reminded me that although summarizing people in a few neat sentences was normal and sometimes helpful, it was a good idea not to engrave a summary in stone. For all Elaine’s coldness and lack of empathy and care, she had recognized that my little ritual every time there was a service was one I needed to do. And Mitchell’s empathy and abundance of social awareness had missed the fact that they had intruded on a private, needed moment. People, like life, were complex, messy, and had more layers than given credit for.
I waited until I heard the sound of their distant voices before looking around the room again. Elaine’s fussing, a product of her meticulous nature, but born of her anxiety around death and grieving, had done little to change anything. The room also began to lose the warmth and light Mitchell carried with him, leaving the soft peace that wouldn’t intrude upon those who came to show their respects.
I turned to the open casket, rolling my shoulders and taking a breath. Once I was ready, I walked up to it and stared into the deceased’s face thoughtfully. I already knew what he looked like, having helped to set up the service and the subsequent burial, but death changed things.
Looking to my right, I took in the large picture on the stand and the collage of images beside it. He had been a towhead as a child, but his hair had darkened to nearly black as he aged. He had grown a beard in what I guessed was his twenties, but his hair had remained the same close-cropped style he’d had until his death.
He was a smiler. Even in the pictures where someone caught him in a candid moment, he was smiling as the camera caught him. Snippets in time caught by a lens. Little moments displayed for others to enjoy, to look back and feel the wash of nostalgia and happiness. All of which were pinned to a board, a summary of his life.
Twenty-two pictures. Forty-nine years.
There would never be enough pictures to sum up a life. There were things in every life that could never be put up on a board to mark their importance to the person and the world around them. There were secrets they kept, some bad, some good, mostly everyday secrets we all kept because they were our secrets and no one else’s.
I let that wash over me as I stared at the pictures, then turned my attention back to the casket. As always, the cosmetic work had been meticulous and graceful. I never believed that the deceased, even touched up expertly, could be mistaken for sleeping. All the memories and secrets had gone with him when his life ended. His past was memory for the living, his present was a corpse, and his future was forever gone.
I didn’t know if there was an existence after death, though in this business, I heard plenty of beliefs from both sides. I didn’t think it mattered if there was an afterlife, or what shape that afterlife took. Whether gone forever or gone for now, he was no longer here, with those who begged, pleaded, and bargained to have another few hours with him.
